A Mirror's Reflection
by Jiia-chan
Summary: Have you ever caught the reflection of the mirror out of the corner of your eye? Have you ever felt yourself falling in to that long, dark corridor? That was what he was like. Once he caught you, he wouldn't ever let you go. A moment in time. Slashless.


This was written during a social class. Warning! It hasn't been edited at all. I only just wrote it. No one's read it yet. As in no one, not even my usual shuack of people. The title is stolen from someone. I think it's a Tales of Symphonia fic, actually. I don't know if I actually read it or not, but the title caught my eye and it's been stuck in there ever since. It's an idea that really intrigues me, that a mirror could have a reflection. I remember once, as a kid, I accidently set up the mirrors in the bathroom to reflect each other. It was really weird. I remember just standing there and wondering where the cool hallway had come from. I highly suggest trying it. It'd exeedingly need.Anyways... On to the fanfiction!

LE GASP! I JUST REALIZED THAT THIS ISN'T SLASH! Omg... Crawls into corner, weeping over her poor, dead, pervert yaoi-fancier muse.

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A Mirror's Reflection

Have you ever caught the reflection of a mirror out of the corner of your eye as you walk past? Have you ever stopped dead in your tracks, suddenly startled by the long, endless corridor stretching down and down and down into the cold dark wasteland of eternity, going so incredibly far, and never going anywhere at all?

That was what he was like.

You looked at him and saw darkness, until you realized what you were really seeing was true nothing at all. You looked at him and you felt yourself falling, loosing yourself inside the emptiness of his being. You looked at him and everything you had thought was true and good about the world was suddenly pale and dark, changed forever by his mere presence. You looked at him and knew that nothing so empty, so devoid of everything, could exist. That his very existence was a contradiction in and of itself. That he shouldn't be. That he couldn't be.

But he was.

He was Nothing, and it scared me more than anything ever had.

No looming Gerudo thief-king could cause me to shudder as I did looking upon him. No ghostly shadow of death could make me tremble so. No raging dragon, no crawling terror, no undead horde could hold me in such a strong state of terror that I couldn't even will myself to move. Not even the amorphous amoeba awaiting me in the deep, dark bowels of the temple came close to making my heart pound in my chest like the jerky flailing of a dying beast. Never before had I felt true fear. Never before had I been in the least bit scared.

But I walked into that room and I was.  
I was crushed by sheer, uncontrollable terror and absolute, crippling despair the second that door clicked shut behind me. The instant I laid eyes upon him, I knew beyond a doubt that I couldn't beat him. He was a mirror held before me, and I could no more kill him than my own reflection. He would block every attack I threw against him, jar my shield with every thunderous blow, match every move I made. And, being the unholy creature that he was, he would still be going strong long after I had fallen over dead with exhaustion.

I couldn't win.

So I gave up.

In all my many muddled years of fighting, in all my battles against the dark forces brought to bear against the ling, I had never once even thought about giving up. It simply wasn't an option. I would have kept going till I died, and sometimes even after. I was as stubborn and determined as an irritated cuckoo. Nothing could dissuade me. Difficult foes usually gave up out of sheer exasperation.

This time was different. This time, I felt that more than my life was at stake. More than just a pitifully weak body, easily resurrected by Navi's fairy friends. I was betting my very soul, and it wasn't something I could afford to loose.

I dropped my sword into the shallow water at my feet. I watched it sink, the holy blade of Evil's Bane disappearing down and down until I couldn't see it anymore, as if the soft mud wasn't even there, as if it was nothing but murky water beneath us for all eternity.

He watched me. Stared at me, really, with those cold, empty red eyes. So like stars, they were. Distant, glowing embers, shimmering fires which should have been warm, but weren't.

He didn't understand what I'd done, that much was certain. To be honest, I didn't really know either. Surrendering simply wasn't part of my personality, nor of his. He was my reflection, after all.

He brought his sword up to my chest, slowly, hesitantly, as if he wasn't quite sure what was expected of him.

I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and waited to die.

Nothing happened.

Water splashed against my legs. I opened my eyes to see the dark shadow of his sword drifting ever downwards to join my own in the crushing black abyss.

I looked up.

He looked at me.

And then he fell to his knees at my feet.

He gazed up at me with an expression of absolute awe on his dark, empty face. He almost fell forward, pressing the palms of the earth into the strange mud which wasn't quite there, his forehead touching the mirror-still surface of the water.

And then he began to cry.

It took me a long, long time to understand what was happening to him, inside him. Some of it I still can only begin to guess at. Just as he had inspired a totally new emotion in me, I inspired a totally new emotion in him. He had given me my first taste of fear, despair, my first dark inkling of what it was like to loose.

I had given him the exact opposite. I had given him power. I had given him victory.

I had given him hope.

As he bowed before me in the chill layer of water, I began to realize that he had never been meant to win. He was to meant to lose the battle, but win my soul. He was meant to make me afraid, make me despair, make me wallow in guilt for killing a creature with a human face, my own human face. He was meant to destroy my will. He was a weapon of psychology, not of brute force.

If I had beaten him, he would have fulfilled what he was meant to do.

As it was, I was entirely uncertain as to what he had and had not done to me.

I looked down at him. I saw darkness which was not darkness, simply an absence of light. I felt the change inside me, felt the hardness growing inside my soul where before there had only been soft dreams and sweeping fantasies. I saw the cold, dark truth of our 'fair land' laid out before me. I looked at him and knew that he shouldn't, couldn't exist.

Not if anything was to remain.

The master sword was back in it's sheath, just as I knew it would be. I pulled it free. It glistened in the diaphanous light of the chamber, tiny drops of moisture rolling down the blade the only sign of it's journey to the endless deep.

He looked up at me, startled by the sound. His eyes were the stars, like the stars should be.

They were warm.

He smiled, a mirror bouncing back the first tentative rays of dawn.

The sword flashed.

And then he died.

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So. What do you think? Review me people! I might very well do more of these, if I get enough response. I'd like to, in any case. 


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